


You're So Impossible

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [17]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:50:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6241912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: Any (except Supernatural, any +/ any, "Oh, I am, am I?" Tag to Outcast. John Sheppard has impossible skills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're So Impossible

The Sheppards had tried to raise their sons to be the perfect white-collar boys. Each was supposed to have a talent outside the home - sports, academics - and a talent inside the home - music. First son the heir, second son the spare. First son the businessman, second son the soldier. (John was glad there hadn't been a third one. Couldn't imagine anyone in the family as a man of the cloth.) John's athletic talent was golf - he'd started playing at six. As for his talent inside the home, his mother had attempted to teach him all the traditional things - art, poetry, even ballroom dancing. Music. The only thing that had stuck was the guitar, and decidedly not classical guitar at that.  
  
But there had always been a grand piano in the home, because during dinner parties it was appropriate to have soothing accompaniment, and the Sheppards had to have the best.  
  
After Patrick Sheppard's funeral, after talking with Dave about the will, after Rossum minions took John back to the Dollhouse for a diagnostic (which he passed with flying colors; thank you, Atlantis), John was back at the house where Dave's family was gathered, still mourning the loss of their patriarch. He'd been called to DC for a briefing, was the cover story. But he still had a few days with his family before he shipped out again. Couldn't stay long. He was mission-critical. But he did want to spend time with them.  
  
(As far as the Dollhouse was concerned, he was stationed under Cheyenne Mountain doing something more militarily significant than deep-space telemetry with his - Joe's - math skills, and while they hadn't been able to get a handler in with him, his continued safety meant the Sheppards were still paying for him, and if everyone was happy, this one breach in protocol would continue unprotested.)  
  
So he wandered into one of the formal sitting rooms where the piano was, and he sat down, and he began to play. One of his nieces wandered up, and he switched from a Mozart sonata to Billy Joel's "Always a Woman". His niece, Clara, sat on the piano bench beside him and watched him play, fascinated, and because she was an innocent kid in all this, John wanted to be nice to her, so he sang to her. She smiled and swayed with the music.  
  
The song drew others into the room slowly. Dave stood in the doorway, looking perplexed, but his wife smiled fondly at the sight of her daughter bonding with her generally estranged uncle.  
  
John shouldn't have been surprised when Nancy slipped into the room and watched him with wary eyes. The Dollhouse had sent her to make sure nothing went awry with him before he shipped out.  
  
Dave said, "I didn't know you could play piano."  
  
John deliberately furrowed his brow. "Mom was always after me to cultivate an appropriate talent for the home. All those years of piano lessons finally stuck, I guess."  
  
Dave looked confused.  
  
Nancy said, "John, you're so impossible."  
  
"Oh I am, am I?" He grinned and sang, _She is frequently kind and suddenly cruel._  
  
Nancy cast Dave a pointed look and then said to John, "It's really unfair, how many talents you do have. Especially when you keep them a secret."  
  
John chuckled. "I'd hardly call my piano-playing a secret. One of my friends at Stanford - kid named Joe, dropped out after first year, came from a sad family situation - he loved to play. Convinced me it was the way to woo women." He met Nancy's gaze. "Helped me woo you."

Mentioning Joe signaled to Nancy that John's previously non-existent piano skills were as a result of his imprint being altered (which wasn't entirely wrong; his imprint hadn't been altered, but now he could access the blind pianist imprint), so she had to play along. She smiled wistfully. "Can you still play our song?"  
  
John immediately segued into Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."  
  
Dave's wife said, "That's so romantic. He can play their song. You were never that romantic, Dave."  
  
"Really, Dave?" John raised his eyebrows. "All these years, and you've never sung for your wife?"  
  
Dave looked cornered. "Not like you played for Nancy, obviously."  
  
John lifted his chin. "Get over here. You can't let Clara think I got all the musical genes in the Sheppard family, can you?"  
  
Dave cast Nancy another look, but she shrugged helplessly, so he had to play along too. He moved to stand beside the piano.  
  
Still hesitant, he said, "Can you play 'Not While I'm Around' from _Sweeney Todd?"_  
  
"I can play anything," John said. (The blind pianist could. He'd been designed as a regular player at a piano bar.) He smiled wryly at his older brother and added, "I forgot how much you like musicals."  
  
"Better than Johnny Cash," Dave said.  
  
John cast him a wounded look. "Heresy!" But he started playing the requested song anyway.  
  
Dave cleared his throat, and for one moment he looked wildly bewildered, because the brother he'd grown up with had never been this musically talented, and seeing for himself just how powerful the Dollhouse technology was had discomfited him. But the Dollhouse had also given him a beautiful family moment, and for all that it was manufactured in a computer somewhere in DC, Dave was going to take it.  
  
John knew that Clara and her sister and mother would always remember this moment fondly, as a time when the tragedy of Patrick Sheppard's death had brought his sons back together, if only for a brief moment over the family's old piano. John also knew that this was a sharp reminder to Nancy that she didn't know what the Dollhouse was doing with him anymore, and to Dave this was an equally sharp reminder that his family had asked the Dollhouse to replace the second son, and for all that he looked and sounded and generally acted like John, he was a stranger, and Dave had no way of knowing what other skills had been impossibly programmed into him.


End file.
